May 16, 2018

Marvel Studios Hires Two Promising Writers for ‘Eternals’ Movie

We’re starting to get a better picture of what the Marvel Cinematic Universe will look like after Avengers 4. A month ago, president Kevin Feige confirmed that Marvel Studios was developing an Eternals movie, and it seems like the process is speeding along quite quickly.

Marvel has hired the writing duo Matthew and Ryan Firpo to write the Eternals movie. The two up-and-comers, who made a big splash on the 2017 Black List with their spec script Ruin, will be penning the script, which is centered around one of Marvel’s strangest superhero teams.

Matthew and Ryan Firpo will pen Marvel’s next potential franchise, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The duo gained attention last year when their Black List spec script Ruin, a period piece about an ex-Nazi captain who hunts down and kills the members of his former SS squad, attracted the attention of Gal Gadot and Marc Butan’s MadRiver Pictures.

Now it seems that the Firpo cousins have earned the attention of Marvel. Marvel has placed them in charge of penning the script to the Eternals movie, which will ostensibly help usher in the cosmic phase of the MCU alongside the next Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a heavy task to place on new writers, especially because the source material is ambitious at best, baffling at worst.

The Eternals is about a race of cosmic beings who create and manipulate humanity, as well as two other species of higher and lesser beings called The Eternals and the Deviants. Originally created by Jack Kirby in the 1970s as a standalone comic book series in which he explored heady themes of creation — much to the chagrin of his editors — The Eternals was eventually folded into the Marvel comics universe. Thanos’ mother was revealed to be an Eternal, and several Eternals teamed up with Avengers at various points in time.

Here is a description of The Eternals per THR:

In comics lore, the saga of the Eternals began millions of years ago when the cosmic beings known as the Celestials genetically experimented on humans, creating the super-powered and near-immortal beings and a more monstrous off-shoot known as the Deviants. The two races moved behind the scenes throughout human history while also engaging in Game of Thrones-style cosmic powerplays.

Among the characters are Ikaris, fueled by cosmic energy; Sersi, who relishes moving amongst humans; and Thena, often mistaken for the Greek goddess Athena.

The premise of aliens experimenting on humans for millennia is actually not a new concept for the MCU — the studio attempted to introduce it with the Inhumans storyline in Inhumans and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to circumvent the absence of X-Men’s mutants. But that has obviously been dropped after the TV and cinematic universe became more disconnected. But thanks to the appearance of the Celestial being Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Marvel has already started planting the seeds for The Eternals.

Now, Marvel will be making another go at this ambitious storyline with promising new writers and a fresh new phase in the MCU.